Even more off-topic!!! You all don't know what you've been doing to me! With all of the stupid computer problems I've had this week, all I've wanted to do all week is pack a bag and move to Moravia, where my (German) ancestors came from! Live a nice, simple, quiet life, without from computers....
Would the little bit of Russian I learned in college 25 years ago help there? LOL On Mar 15, 2013, at 12:57 AM, Hans J. Albertsson wrote: > A-M-A-Z-I-N-G > > Computing is SOOO boring in comparison.. > > > On 2013-03-15 01:25, Jim Klimov wrote: >> On 2013-03-13 10:17, Marcel Telka wrote: >>> On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 09:56:07AM +0100, Hans J. Albertsson wrote: >> >> Way off-topic ;) >> >>>> A Q about the Slovak language: while you were in a union with the >>>> Czechs, did the languages start to unify spontaneously? I mean like >>>> vocabulary changes, minor grammatical drift, spelling oddities >>>> changing and so on and so forth? >>> >>> It is hard to say for sure. Both languages were changed in those ca 70 >>> years we >>> were together in Czechoslovakia, but I do not think they started to unify in >>> any notable way. Most probably they even diverged. Both languages are so >>> different that some young Czech people (< 25) have problems to understand >>> Slovak language comfortably these days. >> >> Having lived in Czech republic for a couple of years now, starting with >> the language courses taught by the philological faculty members of the >> country's major university, I might convey their notion that there are >> about 10 million speakers in the country, and about 12 million overall >> (including USA and other overseas fractions). For the basic level it >> should suffice to know that there are about 6 frequently-used branches: >> proper official language, literary language, "czech of 19. century", >> modern slang, eastern-czech (Moravian) and western-czech (Bohemian). >> On a deeper level several more cities and locations have their dialects >> spoken by several hundred thousand people with distinctly different >> active vocabularies, suffixes and rules. Apparently, areas closer to >> Slovakia geographically have trends in the language that are closer >> as well. The official language is a somewhat artificial amalgam of >> some branches, rather static in its rules and vocabulary, and it is >> taught much like a foreign language by people in (or preparing for) >> higher education, because it is not native for any Czech sub-region. >> >> I'd say that phonetically especially with its word-endings (due to >> declinations) the Slovak language is closer to Russian, while much >> of the structure is similar enough to Czech so that reading texts in >> either language while having learned one is no problem. I'm not sure >> about hearing/speaking it though, but they've had a Czech minister >> natively from Slovakia, who spoke Slovak in the government sessions, >> and it was not a barrier for Czech governmental work, either. >> >> But yes, they are quite different - I was told it takes several weeks >> of watching Slovak TV and reading Slovak websites for a Czech youth >> to become capable (fluent? likely not) in Slovak. Just as well, the >> Czech books and newspapers from some 50-70 years ago, or even more, >> might be just as illegible to a random modern Czech youth ;) >> >> As for inclinations into the language from its neighbors... I'd say >> that Czech has a lot from Latin-German roots with Slavic suffixes >> (verbs like "existovat" = "to exist", adjectives like "perfektní" = >> "perfect" and so on), just like Russian has a lot of regurgitated >> words now stemmed from the aristocracy's standard French language. >> Among such noise it is much harder to discern additions from other >> closely related languages - Slavic in this case. >> >> I am not sure I can contrive an example word in Czech which would >> have "ch" as separate letters; this would most likely also be a >> combination of two word-roots, and I'm almost sure they would be >> liasoned by an "e" (becoming "ceh"), at least in most cases. >> >> BTW, beside vowels and consonants, the Czech language also has a >> number of "semi-vowels" which are consonants with a weak sound. >> In some words they take role of a vowel for phonetics, thus there >> can be words and phrases without vowel characters at all. Possibly >> the most popular example is "strč prst skrz krk" (put a finger >> through the throat) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strč_prst_skrz_krk >> Ah, yes, and there are also diacritics and many wild rules about >> them, sometimes with barely noticeable influence on pronunciation >> and serious disdain from officials who must work with and respect >> the official proper language (which the SMS-generation can't write >> due to lots of practice with ASCII-only SMSes) :) >> >> Hope this helps (to get you puzzled), >> //Jim Klimov >> >> PS: Sorry of the large offtopic, but I didn't start it this time ;) >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> OpenIndiana-discuss mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss > > > _______________________________________________ > OpenIndiana-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss _______________________________________________ OpenIndiana-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss
